My monosyllabic life—the faint
screech of a hawk having the joy
of his prey,
somewhere beside the statuesque mountain.

I have never known fear.
I construct cocoons for five dollars each,
chilled coffins for five cents.

The banality of spice seasoning atmosphere,
tossed continent at every place setting.
Typically,
I dine in my nest of cylinders and pistons,
but today there is a feast
at the hatter’s house,
and I am invited if I bring my kill.
I never look at what I devour,
I don’t want to swallow the
resentful soul.

I am the raptor in the rafters
of the hatter’s mind,
his goggles giving him
truthful vision.

I write with thread,
recording morose intentions.
My flowers grow inverted,
chubby blooms burrowing into
the soil
while the root balls glower
at me in the gray Thursday sun.
My essence is in the breeze,
carried far from me.
One last mournful whisper and it
Is gone over the impassable plain.

My blanket will be cold and uninviting,
and I will chill beneath it
like a spurned lover,
champagne,
ego.

Who is it with red eyes,
the mossy fangs?
Who tills the plain?
His flowers grow up to the
unscrupulous sky,
rancid stench permeating the void.

Pastel pastures bask in
the purity of their useful
ponds,
the hammer ringing in
the paleolithic barn.

The slaughterhouse is pink
with blood washed
with wicked water.

Awake and aware,
the animals appreciate
the land
more than we do.

the curvature of canceled
mountains ripple the fields
like an ocean.

My cardboard dream has
been slashed by the hideous
boxcutter in the corner,
the one with the flesh handle.

Why do I describe my enemy
when you are blind as the
sweet pink Saturday?
It is the white Sunday who sees,
and he says nothing,
sends refrigerated love.

My enemy rents a room in
my house, unevictable
though he even looks as though
his name should be going, going, gone.
He pays me in paint chips left
on a palette I cannot control.
It is lead paint to go with my
old hats,
but the textures and colors
are gorgeous nonetheless.

In the forlorn lake
my fish swims among the
deceitful bait.
Where fathers roam,
millennium meat
on the line.
The river speaks to man,
offers a challenge.
The inescapable mountain
pushes all of us toward the edge
of a precipitous end.